Business Owner Jailed for Violating Walz Orders Released from Custody

An Albert Lea woman who was sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating Gov. Tim Walz’s COVID-19 executive orders was released from custody Saturday morning.

Lisa Hanson, owner of The Interchange Wine and Coffee Bistro, refused to close her business when Gov. Walz ordered all bars and restaurants in the state to shut down. She was found guilty of six misdemeanors as a result.

Prosecutors argued for a $500 fine and several days in jail, but Judge Joseph Bueltel wanted to make an example out of Hanson, which he made clear in court. Bueltel reprimanded Hanson for “making money” while “suckers down the street closed.”

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Loudoun County Schools Security Directed Administrators to Seek Warrants for Students Without Masks

In yet another scandal involving Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS), an email published on Twitter shows school security officials told school administrators to seek warrants from magistrate judges to arrest students who refused to wear masks. 

An email from security head John Clark, posted on Twitter by commentator Ned Ryun, shows Clark giving teachers instructions on February 1 about how to obtain those warrants. The instructions were given just after the school vowed to defy Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who banned mask mandates on his first day in office. 

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Rumble Offers Joe Rogan $100 Million to Use Their Platform Amid Spotify Controversy

Amid controversy over podcaster Joe Rogan’s controversial COVID-19 episodes and some past episodes that contained racial slurs, one video streaming platform is lending Rogan their support. 

“We stand with you, your guests, and you legion of fans in desire for real conversation,” Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said in a letter addressed to Rogan. “So we’d like to offer you 100 million reasons to make the world a better place.”

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Canadian Father Loses Custody of Children Due to Being Unvaccinated

In New Brunswick, Canada, a father of three lost custody of his children after a single judge ruled that his unvaccinated status was a danger to his children.

According to USA Today, the concerned father presented evidence to the judge that pointed out possible harmful effects of the Pfizer-BioTech vaccine, as proof that his concerns about taking the vaccine were valid. But Justice Nathalie Godbout, of the Court of Queen’s Bench, ruled against him by simply deferring to “public health officials” as being superior to his own research.

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Commentary: Time Is Running Out for the COVID Coverups

The Left has a word for misinformation that turns out to be true. They call it, “misinformation.” Over and over again, the tech giants, cheered on by power-drunk government officials, have censored and deplatformed people who have contradicted the official narrative regarding COVID and heavy-handed public health measures that restrict freedom with dubious health benefits.

Tellingly, the demands to censor Joe Rogan rarely identify the supposed “misinformation” he peddled. Even more tellingly, the censors totally fail to acknowledge that Rogan-promoted “conspiracy theories” have a better track record than many of the articles of faith his critics promoted.

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Stacey Abrams’ Maskless School Appearance Showcased in New Republican Governors Association Ad

Members of the Republican Governors Association (RGA) on Monday launched a new digital ad in Georgia that highlights a photo of elementary-aged school children wearing COVID-19 masks behind Stacey Abrams, who was maskless. The five-figure ad will run on multiple social media platforms starting this week, members of the RGA said in a statement.

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Georgia Democratic Governor Candidate Abrams Criticized for Not Wearing COVID Mask Among Students

Stacey Abrams without a mask in a crowd of young students

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams is facing criticism for posing for photos with school children while not wearing a COVID-19 mask.

In now-deleted Twitter posts, Abrams is seen seated on the floor without a mask while several children on each side are each wearing one.

Abrams, a Georgia gubernatorial candidate and nationally known Democrat politician, like other fellow, high-profile party members is being accused of being hypocritical about the mask mandates that many elected Democrats across the country have required people to wear during the pandemic.

Abrams has championed more stringent masking policies in schools, according to CNN.

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Crowdfunding Site GiveSendGo Restarts Canadian Trucker Fund Dropped by GoFundMe, Quickly Raises $1 Million

The upstart crowdfunding website GiveSendGo on Saturday restarted a funding drive in support of the Canadian trucker protests, quickly raising a massive $1 million just hours after the fund was dropped by the larger platform GoFundMe.

GoFundMe had cancelled the funding drive after it had raised a whopping $10 million, claiming that the protest itself had turned into a violent “occupation” and that it violated the company’s terms of service.

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Marines Describe ‘Sham’ Religious Vaccine Exemption Process

The COVID-19 vaccine exemption process in the Marine Corps gives no consideration to the faiths of individual soldiers and could hamper military readiness, according to Marines fighting the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate on religious grounds who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation anonymously out of fear of retribution.

As of Friday, 95% of active duty members of the Marine Corps were fully vaccinated, and another 2% were partially vaccinated, Department of Defense (DOD) spokesperson Maj. Charlie Dietz told the DCNF. A total of 334 Marines have been separated with a vaccine refusal discharge code. The Marine Corps has received 3,538 religious exemption requests, and only three were approved, out of 3,414 requests that were processed.

The Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum on Aug. 24, requiring that all service members be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a matter of readiness.

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Trucker ‘Freedom Convoy’ Sparks More Controversy After GoFundMe Refunds $10 Million

A Canadian movement of truckers protesting the country’s vaccine mandate has inspired a similar protest in the U.S., with a convoy expected to arrive at the nation’s capital next month. That movement, though, sparked controversy beyond its protest this weekend after a run-in with the popular online fundraiser, GoFundMe.

GoFundMe announced it would refund more than $10 million in donations to donors of the “Freedom Convoy” online fundraiser after threats of a fraud investigation from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis threatened the investigation after GoFundMe reportedly froze the fundraising account Friday and said they would give the funds to another charity of Freedom Convoy’s choice.

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Sixteen States File New Lawsuit Against Federal COVID Vaccination Mandate

Sixteen states again are challenging a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers who work at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Friday’s filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana comes after the issuance of final guidance on the mandate from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), arguing the guidance is an action that is reviewable.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 vote Jan. 13 against the original Louisiana challenge to the mandate and a similar Missouri filing.

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Five Atlanta Residents Charged with Fraud in Alleged COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program Scheme

Federal officials in Atlanta have charged 22 people nationwide, including Georgia, with wire fraud conspiracy and other charges in an alleged scheme to obtain nearly $4 million in COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. This, according to a press release that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia published this week.

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Johns Hopkins Study: COVID Lockdowns Had ‘Little to No Effect’

A newly-released study from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University revealed that the sweeping lockdowns in response to the Chinese coronavirus had “little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.”

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the study was conducted through an analysis of 24 different studies that all focused on government mandates ordering the closure of various aspects of everyday life, including school and business shutdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and stay-at-home orders, among others.

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Ohio’s COVID-19 Case Average Falls to Pre-Omicron Levels

Ohio’s seven-day COVID-19 case rate has now fallen to about the same level of seven-day cases as the state saw in mid-September, when the more deadly Delta variant was the virus’ prominent strain. 

As of February 2, Ohio had an average seven-day case rate of 7,806, a drastic drop in that average over a period of just two weeks, according to publicly available data. On January 19, the seven-day average caseload was 27,462 cases. 

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Child Psychiatrist: Toll on Children’s Mental Health During Government Response to Pandemic Is ‘Utterly Devastating’

Though children are least likely to experience severe illness from COVID-19, the level of mental health distress many are exhibiting during the government’s response to the pandemic is “utterly devastating,” child psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald said in a recent interview.

The Los Angeles-based clinician expressed his concern during a late November podcast for the Unity Project, an organization working to end COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthy children in grades K-12.

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Wisconsin Governor Evers Updates Process to Spend $4.5 Billion from Federal Government

Tony Evers

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers updated residents of the state on his latest efforts to spend more than $4 billion given to the state from coronavirus relief funds.

According to the governor, $1.3 billion has been directed to economic initiatives, roughly $1 billion for “community building,” and more than $500 million for education and child care.

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New Iowa Bill Would Allow Parents to Watch Kids’ Classrooms

An Iowa representative introduced Tuesday a bill that would allow parents to watch live footage of their children in public school classrooms.

“I think we need to showcase the great work our teachers do,” Rep. Norlin Mommsen, R-DeWitt, a farmer, told The Center Square in a phone interview Tuesday.

He said that through the COVID-19 pandemic, parents learned they wanted to be more involved, and this is a mechanism of facilitating parental involvement.

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Tennessee Attorney General’s Office Tells Judge That COVID-19 Reports Must Remain Withheld from Public Access

Tennessee Deputy Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter argued in court last week that reports that a government-hired consultant filed regarding COVID-19 should remain exempt from the public. This, according to a new column that The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG) recently published. The TCOG, according to its website, promotes open government and citizen access to public information.

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Commentary: Biden Needs to Decide If COVID Is Still a ‘National Emergency’

The omicron variant may be nearing its peak in some states, but across the country it’s produced a dizzying array of conflicting signals on whether the nation should remain under a COVID national emergency or move on to an endemic “new normal.”

Comedian Bill Maher’s “I don’t want to live in your mask-paranoid world anymore” monologue went viral last week, just days after the Atlantic, the standard-bearer journal for the liberal intelligentsia, ran a story headlined: “COVID Parenting Has Passed the Point of Absurdity.” Accompanying the article was a black-and-white photo of a woman frozen in a more desperate and primal state of panic than the subject of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

Omicron, for most people without co-morbidities, produces much milder symptoms than do the coronavirus’s previous variants, but it’s far more infectious, racing through schools, shutting down classrooms and forcing parents to consult their district’s ever-shifting COVID “decision trees” on a seemingly daily basis.

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U.S. Truckers Plan Their Own Freedom Convoy from California to Washington, D.C. to Protest Authoritarian COVID Mandates

Inspired by their Canadian brethren, American truckers have decided to form their own nationwide “Convoy to DC” in protest of the Biden regime’s authoritarian COVID policies.

The group’s Facebook page, Convoy to DC 2022, already has over 131,000 thousand followers.

“We are part of many large groups who believe in our founding fathers. We believe everyone has a voice. We support our freedom. Help us spread the word about this group and together we all can make it a better place. God Bless America,” the page reads.

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Analysis: Coming to Grips with the Facts About Masks

Allegations that “masks work” and “don’t cause harm” have been enforced by governments and corporations around the world for more than 18 months through arrests, firings, censorship, fines, and denial of access to schools, supermarkets, hospitals, streets, and other public spaces. This has made it virtually impossible for many people to live without complying with mask mandates.
In recent weeks, however, more medical scholars and media outlets are coming to grips with facts about masks that Just Facts has been documenting for more than a year and painstakingly compiled in a September 2021 article sourced with more than 50 peer-reviewed science journals. Here’s a sample of people who are speaking up about the facts and their implications:

Dr. Vinay Prasad—an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco—has written an article that examines the scientific evidence for masking children and concludes that:

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George Mason University Pulls Booster Mandate After Students Fight Back

healthcare worker giving vaccination

After students at George Mason University (GMU) fought the school’s administration on mandatory booster shots for COVID-19, the school Monday announced that it has scrapped the mandate, though it did not credit the students for their efforts. 

“George Mason University announced today it will strongly encourage students who remain unvaccinated to get the COVID-19 vaccine and booster, but no longer require it, in observance of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’ opinion,” the school said in a message written by President Gregory Washington. 

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Joe Biden and the Uses of Nihilism

Chaos is the new, the intentional, normal. A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land. As in Lord of the Flies, when laws, rules, protocols, traditions, and customs are mocked and dismantled, primitive human nature in the raw is unleashed. 

Madness now reigns in every quarter, from the iconic to the irrelevant to the fundamental. Statues of Lincoln, Douglass, and Jefferson are toppled or defaced. The rules of capitalization have been altered. We are told that 1619, not 1776, was our founding date—and this by a “civil rights” activist-journalist who had no idea of the date that the Civil War began.

Quite quickly after the revolutionary boilerplate, America began reverting to its natural Hobbesian or Thucydidean essence. If you dispute that, look at looted packages along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Try walking the nocturnal streets of Chicago or Baltimore. Visit the sidewalk homeless of San Francisco. Fly over our constipated ports. Drive into our empty new car dealerships. Pull up to our European-priced gas pumps. Shop in the emptying shelves of our Sovietizing food and discount stores. The common theme of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, apparently, is that the entertainers must have written lyrics threatening the police, denigrating women, using the N-word . . . and be worth $100 million.

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Ohio State University Adjusts COVID-19 Protocols for Students, Faculty, Staff, and Visitors

Aerial view of Ohio State University

The Ohio State University is adjusting some COVID-19 health and safety protocols for students, faculty, staff and visitors, according to a Monday press release by the university.

In a message from Senior Vice President for Student Life Melissa Shivers and Senior Vice President and Wolfe Foundation Endowed Athletics Director Gene Smith, Buckeyes are asked to follow “local and university mask mandates, appropriate physical distancing, availability of PPE and hand sanitizer, limited distribution of literature and other items, and any other recommendations event planners, coordinators and public health advisors may have” when it comes to in-person gathering.

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Commentary: We Can’t Split the Difference on Culture

The United States is an outlier among established democracies in two respects: We face both falling social trust and rising polarization. I have argued that the two dynamics connect in a doom loop. Trust in others and institutions falls, leading to greater polarization, which drives trust down even more. That is why the two processes are getting worse at the same time. A nasty dynamic has taken hold in the country, and it regularly affects all of us.

Many issues polarize us, but we should prefer polarization on economics to polarization on culture. Polarization is least damaging on issues most amenable to “splitting the difference”—as many economic issues are.

Consider taxes. Progressives want higher taxes on the rich, while conservatives want lower taxes. The possibility of compromise always exists—and even if it is obscured beneath the surface of our political tempers, uncovering it is not hard. For example, we could average our preferred tax rates, and no one would come away emptyhanded. Granted, that’s not how we have handled this issue in the past, but it’s at least conceivable.

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Virginia Mom Rips Into School Board over Hypocritical Mask Rules

A Virginia mother addressed her children’s school board Thursday night regarding the district’s mask mandate, which subverts Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order allowing parents to choose whether or not to mask their children in school.

A Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) mother, Carrie Lukas, condemned the school board for requiring children to mask up for school while “across Virginia, right now, adults are gathering in gyms, bars and clubs and laughing together maskless.”

“Yet my five kids spent all day today, eight hours, in masks in Fairfax County Public Schools,” she said. “My first grader has never been inside his school without a mask. He’s never had a chance to smile at his friends or hear his teachers’ unmuffled voice, and it is outrageous and ridiculous.”

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Google Kicks Dan Bongino Off Ads Platform Days After YouTube Ban

Google temporarily suspended conservative talk show host Dan Bongino’s website, Bongino.com, from its ads service, a company spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday.

“We have strict publisher policies in place that explicitly prohibit misleading and harmful content around the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrably false claims about our elections,” the spokesperson said. “When publishers persistently breach our policies we stop serving Google ads on their sites. Publishers can always appeal a decision once they have addressed any violating content.”

The spokesperson added that while Google would not disclose the specific offending content on Bongino.com, the website had been subject to frequent reviews and Google had flagged content in violation of its policies.

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Virginia Attorney General Says College Mandate Vaccines for Students Illegal

Virginia’s Attorney General released a legal opinion Friday saying that under Virginia law, vaccine mandates for college students are illegal. 

“Absent specific authority conferred by the General Assembly, public institutions of higher education in Virginia may not require vaccination against COVID-19 as a general condition of students’ enrollment or in-person attendance,” Attorney General Jason Miyares said in his opinion. 

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Knox County Health Department Officials Announce New COVID-19 Deaths, Some of Which Actually Occurred Last Fall

Knox County Health Department officials announced 39 additional COVID-19 deaths among county residents on Wednesday for the current reporting period of January 16 through January 22. But Knox County Health Department officials also said 10 of those deaths occurred not this month but in previous months. They said they will add those deaths to their charts according to their dates of death.

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International Monetary Fund Projects Weaker Than Expected 2022 Economic Growth for U.S. and China

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its global economic growth forecast for 2022 on Tuesday, citing growing COVID-19 cases, supply chain bottlenecks and soaring inflation.

The IMF now projects global gross domestic (GDP) product to grow 4.4% in 2022, down from 5.9% growth in 2021, according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report published Tuesday. The IMF projected global GDP would reach 4.9% in its Fall report.

“The global economy enters 2022 in a weaker position than previously expected,” the report said, blaming “downside surprises,” including soaring COVID-19 cases and turbulent markets.

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Tennessee Officials Release New Project School Performance Data Predating COVID-19

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and staff at the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) this week released projected data that predates COVID-19 and compared it to student’s actual TCAP scores. They said in a press release that they did this to measure the pandemic’s impact on student achievement via the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) public site. State officials use the site annually to measure students’ overall growth.

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Nashville Among Bottom Ten Large Cities for Its Financial Health

Nashville ranked 68th out of the 75 largest cities in the U.S. in total debt per taxpayer, according to Truth in Accounting’s new Financial State of the Cities report.

TIA’s analysis examined the financial health of America’s 75 most-populous cities and calculated how much each resident would have to pay to cover all of their city’s bills. The calculations were based on fiscal year 2020 audited financial reports.

The analysis found debt increased during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic despite federal funding being available. The total debt in the 75 cities increased $23 billion in 2020 to $357 billion total.

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FDA Pulls Authorization for Antibody Treatment, Refuses to Answer Questions

SAN DIEGO (Jan 26, 2020) Lt. Cmdr. Raben Talvo, Naval Medical Center San Diego's (NMCSD) Office of Clinical Quality department head, administers the hospital’s first monoclonal antibody (mAb) treatment to a COVID-19-positive patient Jan. 26. Bamlanivimab, the mAb treatment, is administered under emergency use authorization (EUA) guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms in some adult and pediatric patients who are at high risk for progressing to severe COVID-19 symptoms. NMCSD's mission is to prepare service members to deploy in support of operational forces, deliver high quality healthcare services, and shape the future of military medicine through education, training, and research. NMCSD employs more than 6,000 active duty military personnel, civilians, and contractors in Southern California to provide patients withworld-class care anytime, anywhere. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Harley K. Sarmiento)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Monday unexpectedly pulled its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19, dealing a blow to states like Florida which have been using the treatment effectively for months. 

“Without a shred of clinical data to support this action, Biden has forced trained medical professionals to choose between treating their patients or breaking the law,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in response to the FDA’s decree. “This indefensible edict takes treatment out of the hands of medical professionals and will cost some Americans their lives. There are real-world implications to Biden’s medical authoritarianism – Americans’ access to treatments is now subject to the whims of a failing president.”

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Majority of Democrats Say the Unvaccinated Should Be Confined to Home: Poll

One-third of Americans say they haven’t gotten the COVID-19 shots, majority of Democrats say they should be confined at all times, and or fined.

A majority of Democrats say they’d support the unvaxxed being confined to their homes at all times, with 45% saying they should be confined to designated facilities and 55% support for fines.

Roughly one-third of Americans surveyed in a recent poll say they haven’t received the COVID-19 shots and the majority of them said they don’t plan on getting them. The unvaccinated would be targeted by a majority of Democrats in another poll who say they favor a government policy that would require them to “remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies.”

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Shock Poll: 73 Percent of Renacci’s GOP Supporters Think 2020 Election Stolen From Trump, Only 39 Percent of DeWine’s GOP Supporters

President Donald J. Trump’s one-time campaign manager, now advising James B. “Jim” Renacci’s gubernatorial campaign, touted a new internal poll in an exclusive interview with The Ohio Star that found the former congressman is leading Gov. R. Michael “Mike” DeWine in the race for the Republican nomination to be decided in the May 3 primary.

Trump is playing a major role in Republican voter preferences for the 2022 campaign, said Brad Parscale, who tracks Renacci’s messaging and other facets of the campaign, in an exclusive interview about the poll.

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Missouri Attorney General Sues Nine More School Districts over Mask Requirements

young girl getting face mask put on her face

Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Monday filed lawsuits against nine public school districts with mask requirements.

Schmitt, a candidate for the seat of retiring U.S. Republican Senator Roy Blunt, filed suit against 36 school districts on Friday. Today’s districts being sued include the Kirkwood School District and the Special School District of St. Louis, both serving where Schmitt resides in Glendale, Mo.

“As we’ve made clear from the beginning, the power to make health decisions for their children should be in the hands of parents, not bureaucrats,” Schmitt said in a statement. “Today I’m filing nine more lawsuits against school districts that are illegally enforcing mask mandates on schoolchildren. Masking children all day in school is ineffective and these endless pandemic restrictions lead to lasting, negative psychological impacts on children and teens. This is a fight worth fighting, and I’m not going to back down.”

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University Bets on Bitcoin as Nationwide Enrollment Dips

San Diego State University is now accepting donations in the form of Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

An anonymous donor has sent the school approximately $25,000 worth of Bitcoin, according to the SDSU NewsCenter.

“The SDSU auxiliary will keep almost all of the contribution in the form of Bitcoin instead of immediately converting it all to cash as many other universities have done,” the outlet reported.

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Small Business Administration Spends $14.8 Million in Questionable Costs for Underutilized Small Business Portal

U.S Small Business Administration

This week’s Golden Horseshoe is awarded to the Small Business Administration for lax oversight of a $25 million grant for the creation of a COVID-19 relief small business portal that ran up $14.8 million in questionable costs for an underutilized hub, according to a report by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The SBA’s Office of Entrepreneurial Development (OED) received $25 million through the CARES Act to create a portal to help small businesses during the pandemic. An $18.6 million grant was awarded for the Resource Partner Training Portal program, but the intended results were not achieved. A combination of a failed marketing strategy to let small businesses know of the portal’s existence and unsupported or unallowable invoices led the inspector general to question $14.8 million in costs.

“SBA did not did not ensure the grant recipient developed and implemented an effective marketing and outreach strategy to ensure the hub successfully achieved the legislative purpose of the CARES Act,” Inspector General Hannibal “Mike” Ware stated in the report.

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Professor Pushes Students at Virtual ‘Die-In’ to Use ‘Radical Activist Tactics’ for Stricter COVID Policies

KSU Covid Safety Coalition, a student-led organization at Kent State University, held a virtual “die-in” protest Tuesday to pressure the school administration to adopt stricter COVID-19 guidelines.

The virtual protest occurred over Microsoft Teams and featured students and faculty voicing their opinions on the university’s response to the pandemic.

Natalia Cruz, a third-year student at Kent State, spoke first about the “sorry excuse of a response and plan in regards to the COVID 19 pandemic.”

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Tennessee’s Unemployment Reaches Lowest Level Since January 2020

Unemployment in Tennessee reached a two-year low in December, according to new data that the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD) released late last week. The state ended 2021 with an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent, which was 0.2 of a percentage point lower than the rate it recorded in November. Over the past year, Tennessee’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased by 1.8 percentage points from 5.6 percent to 3.8 percent.

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‘If There Is Risk, There Must Be Choice’: Dr. Robert Malone Stirs Defeat Mandates Rally in DC

Vaccine Mandates

Protesters opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates marched on Washington, D.C. on Sunday, embarking on a mile-long march before convening at a rally outside the Lincoln Memorial.

Organizers with Children’s Health Defense predicted 20,000 people would attend the event, Defeat the Mandates.

Speakers included Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., virologist and immunologist Dr. Robert Malone, investigative journalist Lara Logan, and doctors and other experts.

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Arizona Republicans Pressure Yellen Not to Claw Back COVID Aid

Republican members of Arizona’s congressional delegation have a demand for United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen: don’t take federal relief funding away from the state.

Arizona is scheduled to receive $4.2 billion from the federal government as a part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan; it has received nearly $1.2 billion of that money so far.

However, the United States Treasury Department has warned the state that it may forfeit $163 million if it doesn’t change its actions.

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Missouri AG Sues 36 School Districts with Mask Requirements, But Not His Own District

Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt completed on Friday a promise made earlier this week by filing lawsuits against 36 public school districts for requiring masks.

“Mask mandates in schools are illegal, they simply don’t work, and they contribute to alarming and negative psychological impacts on our children,” Schmitt, a candidate for the seat of retiring Republican U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, said in a statement announcing the lawsuits. “My Office has been on the frontlines of the fight to end the forced masking of children all day in school, and today we took concrete legal action toward that end. Parents and families, not bureaucrats, should have the power to decide what’s best for their children. With this litigation, we’re seeking to return that power back to parents and families, where it belongs.”

Earlier this week, leaders of two Missouri public school district collaboratives told The Center Square that attorneys for many school boards believe two Missouri statutes require districts to create and enforce policies to ensure the health and safety of students. Schmitt stated a November Cole County Circuit Court ruling, now being appealed by St. Louis and Jackson Counties at the Missouri Court of Appeals, prevents school districts from enforcing any public health orders. Schmitt set up an email box through his office in December and received 11,000 messages and photographs from people witnessing mask requirements in public schools.

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Amid Legal Doubt over Youngkin Mask Opt-Out Order, Virginia Departments of Health and Education Emphasize Parents, Officials Share Responsibility for COVID-19 Mitigation

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and Department of Education (VDOE) updated their guidelines to reflect Governor Glenn Youngkin’s mask-mandate opt-out order. The new guidance downplays masks and says COVID-19 risk reduction is a shared responsibility between parents and officials.

“These three core principles found in Executive Order 2 reaffirm: 1. Parents are in charge of their children’s health, wellbeing and education, 2. Schools must be open five days a week for in-person learning, and 3. The Commonwealth and school divisions must provide a safe and healthy school environment,” the new guidance states.

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CDC Report Finds Natural Immunity Worked Better Than Vaccine Against COVID’s Delta-Variant Wave

Anew CDC report states a prior case of COVID-19 protected people from infection better than vaccinations did during the delta wave last summer and fall.

The findings were published Wednesday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and is based on new research from the agency and health officials in California and New York that appears to contradict public health messaging that pushed for vaccinations.

Still, experts say the vaccination shots remain the safest way to protect against the worse side effects of contracting COVID, according to NBC News. During the height of the virus’s delta-variant surge last summer, essentially all hospitalized COVID patients were not vaccinated.

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